I was spotting in BOS today and 2 odd occurences happened within 15 mins. A surprise Iberia A340-300 landed around 4:20. It was on its way to JFK but was rediverted to BOS. I was listening to Air Traffic Control and apparently JFK was backed up or something.

15 Minutes later, there was a loud bang and lots of smoke where rubber met pavement when an AA flight landed. The right rear tire had popped. Emergency crews rushed over and was eventually tugged to the gate 30 minutes later.

When I was walking out of work at 4:45 I saw a 4-engine jet heading like toward the SE, which is definitely an odd heading for any jets into NYC, and it was quite lower than even EWR traffic would be. Maybe JFK was in some kind of hold this afternoon causing that too.

Apparently the tower at JFK was evacuated earlier today due to a smoke condition caused by faulty equipment. The total time offline was about 20 minutes. The time of the incident happened around the time of arrival for Iberia 6251 which diverted to BOS this afternoon. It looks like the complication in the tower didn't cause to much of a back up since most planes just cirlcled for a little while and then landed. Iberia 6251 might have been low on fuel causing it to divert to BOS.

Yes, long ago Iberia served Boston with scheduled DC-10 service. They lost one of their DC-10s at Logan after it hit the approach lights jutting into the harbor. No fatalities, but the plane was written off. Sometime after that, IB discontinued service at BOS altogether. This is going back to the 1980s.